21.5.17

A Film a Week - The Aquatic Effect / L'effet aquatique

What
have we learned from The Aquatic Effect (L’effet aquatique),
the latest and the last film by the French-educated Icelandic
director Solveig Anspach who died of breast cancer almost a
full year before the film was released? That swimming pool people are
quirky. That Iceland is quirky. That love is quirky. And that amnesia
can serve as a fresh start if the whole relationship was based on a
lie, which is also quirky. I have no problem with quirkiness per se,
but when it is being combined with overwhelming randomness in the
terms of plot... It can be tricky.

It
all starts with Samir (Samir Guesmi) buying his palm-decorated
bathing shorts, which leads him to buying a season ticket for the
local swimming pool, which leads him to falling in love at first
sight with the lifeguard / swimming instructor Agathe (Florence
Loiret Caille), which leads him to making her believe he cannot
swim, so he could take classes with her in order to seduce her. Once
when the truth is out, (and nobody likes lies, mkay?) she is so cross
with him that she flies all the way to Iceland to a lifeguard
convention.

And
he follows her there, so the silly stream of events continues: he
steals the identity of an Israeli representative so he can attend the
conference. Under pressure to invent something really quickly, he
comes up with, as he says, “together project” of building pools
between Israel and Palestine so people can relax. He becomes an
instant star, but Agathe is still unimpressed. And it turns out that
Samir and Agathe both know the conference host Anna (Didda
Jónsdóttir), which is funny because they are from the same
French town and they didn’t know each other before, and that leads
to both of them staying with her, bringing their awkward chemistry
with them, which leads to Samir being accidentally electrocuted
and contracting aforementioned amnesia...

Yeah,
love is strange, and, according to Anspach and
her co-writer/director Jean-Luc
Gaget, so is pretty much
everything else in life. There are several subplots involving quirky
characters: French, Icelandic and the ones in the pool safety
business, just to underline it. Somewhere in the background we can
see a debate going on about cultural differences between two
countries, with free body culture opposed to puritanism and fois-gras
as a symbol of food industry opposed to sustainable eco-friendly
farming, but it almost never reaches the spotlight.

On
top of that, all three main characters are familiar to the viewers
from Solveig Anspach’s previous films, Back Soon
(2008) and Queen of Montreuil (2012), but now they are being
put in a different context. Even their occupations and careers are
different: Anna used to be a pot dealer and Agathe was a film
director in previous instalments. I guess Solveig Anspach just
likes to play with the idea of fluidity in life.

And,
frankly, it is borderline ridiculous, but still, The Aquatic
Effect is a pleasant journey. Grounded by the solid performances
of the actors, in which Samir Guesmi’s clumsy confusion and
Florence Loiret Caille’s nervousness is balanced by Didda
Jónsdóttir’s act of cool, it kinda works. Also, the
“photography porn” of the amazing Icelandic nature and crystal
clear underwater shots can only help. In the end, it is hard to say
if the overall result is good, since the film is not even trying to
make sense, but it is fun and it is warm.